It's not Trump that will be the undoing of American Democracy. He's a symptom of a much larger problem as I see it and American Democracy won't survive it unless we make it 100% a priority to elect people pledged to end it, hell it already feels a little sarcastic to call it a Democracy. The reason he gets away with unimaginable policies and lying and just in general being a lazy idiot is simple. Money, not his money, but the money being pumped into the parties and PACs by wealthy extremists and special interests. Trump helped whip people on the right into a frenzy, but that was happening before plenty by their actors spewing propaganda on their networks, but its PAC money and RNC money that tells these politicians (that are sans backbone until they decide not to run again) "hey, you better fall in line or we'll find and fund your primary opponents that will."
That's the root of the problems on pretty much any level policy, from partisanship, to nobody able to stand up to their leadership. It's turned being an elected representative into a hostage to their leadership or they get the "how are you going to keep your glorified telemarketing job when we'll bury you in attack ads next cycle if you don't snap to."

I just use it to be passive aggressive, it's a stupid emoji, frankly all of them are. Might as well just stick a -1 in there, because that's the use it gets.
On the other hand it allows me to be dismissive without the risk of getting myself banned so its got that going for it. Although I've only ever used it on two posters and I am sure everyone can figure out who, no wait 3, redux got there with his welfare queen stuff the other day because I didn't feel like explaining how overextending yourself with credit works or why viewing the "jones's" from the outside doesn't mean that they are in a good or sustainable financial situation.

I'm guessing you missed the QA session where he was a complete jackass to reporters and even told pbs reporter Yamiche Alcindor (a black woman) she asked a "racist question" when she was asking why he called himself a nationalist and if he thought that was emboldening white nationalists when they had a white nationalist apparently visiting the white house today.
I'm not particularly surprised he can go rub it in people's faces in the press when they lost and say its because they didn't want to kiss the ring (his a$$), but he comes unhinged when anyone has the gall to question him about his appeal to the neanderthals on the extreme right. It's how the narcissist mind works; I didn't do that, you do that, but if I did that it wasn't that bad, if it was that bad then you deserved it.
What's sad is there's an entire party of people out there where that's viewed and promoted as strength. Strength isn't playing to the baser instincts of old white racism, that's fear mongering. It does real damage to peoples lives to incite that in his supporters. Not just for the minorities and left that become targets for his mentally ill incel followers. It hurts his supporters too, it isolates them, and their augmented reality where everyone is out to get you and you have to be outraged and angry all the time becomes self reinforcing.
It's sad to see. I grew up in Nebraska where I basically saw people going out of their way to give someone in need the shirt off their backs or help any neighbor in need. That still may exist out there, but the feeling for me now is more everyone seems colder and just generally (and I've seen this in my own family) people hooked on the right's media become insufferable pricks a large percentage of their time. I had a few old family members get sucked in and being around them when all they wanted to do was rant about Obama with fox news blaring on the TV (that was on 24/7) was frankly so miserable that the younger members of the family avoided them in the last years of their lives because it was all they'd ever discuss. In reality not all that much changed that impacted their lives, beyond being fed a constant stream of made up outrage playing to their lowest instincts. The sun still rose, work still needed to be done, and people in general are pretty good and just trying to live their lives.
I wish Rupert Murdoch, Ailes, and Trump, who is both caught in and an active participant of that phenomenon the lowest rungs in hell for turning the last few years of many other peoples lives into a lonely anger fueled hell before they go.

No, it's not a "both sides" thing. The reason you see similar stories on the centrist newspapers is because they actually do journalism and use sources and facts and they investigate before they publish and that tends to lead to fairly similar reporting. If the right did that too then it'd be a both sides thing, but they don't, they throw a bunch of fear-mongering s#!t out there and then push what sticks without concern for evidence, facts or science, instead usually directly opposed to them, and designed to manipulate through fear and outrage. That's not the same thing.

That's the entire right's modus operandi, they push a consistent narrative to their flock of things that aren't true, but they repeat enough across their info sphere that they become "true" to their listeners and viewers and once it's taken in as fact it's designed to scare and outrage the hell out of them. They do that because people that are afraid don't think rationally anymore and are more pliable to their "suggestions". They use small boiled down descriptions and nicknames for things because they believe (rightly) their voters are too stupid to understand that saying something like "We want to cut your healthcare and retirement benefits and pass the savings onto corporations" and calling it "cutting entitlements" means the same f#&%ing thing, they test the phrasing in their little boiled down descriptions so they generate the maximum possible outrage.
They've been doing it for 30 years nationally and there are some real gems like pushing the narrative that second hand smoke isn't harmful or nicotine isn't addictive, coal/oil pollution doesn't cause climate change, and net neutrality is anti competition and bad for the consumer.
A true "skeptic" (or whatever fashionable term they are using now to describe their own believing a load of bulls#!t) would notice those are all narratives that benefit their biggest corporate donors.

Because he spends his time AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES not even dog-whistling, no, he spends it VILIFYING groups of our fellow citizens, asylum seekers, and anyone else he can get his base to hate and fear. This stirs up people that are already mentally ill and full of hate. He knows that it does that, he consciously made the decision to do these things because it also riles up his base and keeps them scared of the world and outraged at everyone who isn't them. It doesn't matter that 99% of what comes out of his mouth is a PROVABLE lie.
Everyone should be embarrassed by that. This isn't a "both sides" deal and if you think that it is you are divorced from reality.

Just goes to show how absolutely moronic he thinks his followers are. "Rogue killers" INSIDE a Saudi consulate, flown in in the middle of the night on a charter'd flight, and leaving the same day. You know your typical tourists.

It's been a dumpster fire since Callahan. That's 14 years at this point. We'll see if Frost gets them back where he wants to, but frankly if he doesn't, the Huskers aren't going back to the top ever. With the overreaction and lack of patience people have here, my money's on never.
There's a lot to be said about consistency when you're talking about building a team from school kids. Every week I see more and more clicking. The losses suck, of course, for them most of all but at least the team looks like they want to actually try and play football and to get better. They don't look like they just want to go through the motions every play and get home asap. They have an almost comical ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but that isn't new. They've done that for years in big games. They get all jittery, make mistakes and then throw in the towel. The throw in the towel part is really what made it unbearable to watch for me, and thankfully that's a lot better.
People calling for heads and looking for anyone they can to place blame, well, that's what got Nebraska here in the first place. That and having AD's and President's stupid enough to listen. It's down to the last hope here, IMO. The university's tried the "throw money" approach, we ended up with Callahan. They tried the "lets just fix the defense approach" we ended up with a few good years under Pelini and then attrition, they tried the "lets get someone with a similar public temperament to TO" and we ended up with Riley. This team was awful last year and had a lot of attrition. People predicting 9 wins or even 6+ wins were obviously nuts. It's time for a new approach: The sit back, support the team and let the coach sort it out on his own approach. If it doesn't work out, we're down to the "make it 1997 again through science or magic" and begging TO not to retire approach.

They need to stop calling them "impressionable" and start using the non PC terms for them, since that's all they'll understand. Gullible Idiots. That's what they are, that will cherry pick whatever their propaganda machine serves them up and get outraged about it.
EVERYONE, on both sides, unless they are a nut-ball are outraged about most of the list.
But personally, I find it hard to care if any representative (R or D) can't go out to dinner with the public if they spend their days s#!tting on them and policies they depend on, they absolutely need to know how the things they do affects the citizens of the country and most of them insulate themselves from the public so they can live in their own little bubble and pretend everyone agrees with them on everything.